Inequality of Opportunity in the Labour Market Entry of Graduates in Italy

Abstract:     
The aim of the study is to test for equality of opportunity at the entry into the national labour market of Italian graduates. By using an Italian survey data on the transition from university to work, we focus on the probability to get a job within three years from the graduation, and we find significant differences across individuals with different family background. In an attempt to explain whether these differences reflect opportunity inequality, we adopt the Gomulka-Stern decomposition method. This method allows us to decompose differences in the probability to find a job between groups of people with different family background into two additive components. The first component can be attributed to differences between groups in the distribution of individuals. characteristics. The second component is a residual difference which can be attributed to opportunity inequality under the assumption that there is no unobserved heterogeneity between groups. In the presence of unobserved heterogeneity, this residual component gives us a biased estimation for the difference in probability explained by opportunity inequality.

Keywords: Inequality of Opportunity, Higher Education, Gomulka-Stern Decomposition

JEL Classification: D63, I2, C25

working papers series